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Signs of Dyslexia

Sue:
Can you please tell us what is dyslexia and what are the most common signs of it?

Ron:
Wow! To fully answer your question would require about a hundred pages of text.   Most people think that dyslexia IS a LEARNING DISABILITY. What I think we have proven over the last twenty or so years is that learning disabilities, and there are about eighty different ones, are only characteristics of the Gift of dyslexia. It is believed that dyslexia is a congenital mental abnormality or a genetically caused brain defect. We have discovered that these opinions are incorrect. It is true that the gift follows a family line, but it does so just as any other talent, such as artistic or musical ability. It is only the talent aspect of dyslexia that runs in families. The learning problems are developmental, and are the product of three very common human traits. Dyslexia is the product of thought, talent, and a low tolerance for the emotion of confusion.

It is commonly believed that there are two different methods of human thought, verbal and non-verbal. Verbal thinking is happening when you are talking to your self inside your head. Non-verbal thinking is less obvious because when you do it, it's subliminal, meaning it's happening faster than you can be aware. We now understand that non-verbal thinking is in the form of mental imagery. Non-verbal thinking is the more basic method of thinking because verbal thinking is a developed skill and cannot begin to develop until after a person learns a language. Most people can do both kinds of thinking, but the dyslexic is slower to develop their verbal thinking skill.

The dyslexic will be primarily a "picture thinker" until at least the age of 9. Please note that this kind of thinking is subliminal, so the dyslexic is usually not aware that they are doing it. Now we get to the talent aspect of dyslexia. A talent is an uncommon natural ability. The dyslexic talent is simple. Dyslexics can intentionally cause themselves to be disoriented. Disorientation is the state and condition of the brain shifting from actual perception to distorted or altered perception. If you are dizzy, you can feel like you are moving when you are not, and stationary things in the environment can appear to be moving. This is a form of disorientation. There is nothing uncommon about disorientation, all humans can, and do, do it quite often. What is uncommon is intentionally causing it to happen. The dyslexic is born with the ability to cause it to occur. Disorientation will allow the dyslexic brains to see more than what their eyes see, to hear more than what their ears hear, and feel things their body isn't touching. If you see a child daydreaming, this is what they are doing. Daydreaming is just one of the myriad of gifts this talent can give the dyslexic. A learning disability is another. Because disorientation is a natural ability, the dyslexic incorporates it into their thought and recognition process.

The final piece of this puzzle has to do with the emotion we recognize as confusion. It is the feeling we experience if we look at something and fail to recognize what it is, or if something unexpected happens. A fundamental aspect of early life is the recognition of the objects in the immediate environment. Having use of disorientation enhances this ability, because disorientation will allow the person to see or experience an object from a myriad of perspectives. Because of this, the dyslexic begins using disorientation in the process of recognition. When disorientation is used in this way, recognition happens very quickly. So the dyslexic experiences the emotion of confusion for only a few seconds at any given time. Therefore the dyslexic does not develop much of a tolerance for that feeling. A non-dyslexic person will experience extended periods of time experiencing confusion and will naturally develop a higher tolerance to it. By the age of 9 most non-dyslexic children can tolerate about three times more confusion than most dyslexic children. Whenever a dyslexic becomes sufficiently confused they will automatically become disoriented. This is how the gift of dyslexia can become a learning disability. Any aspect of learning which causes sufficient confusion will for the person will be an aspect of learning wherein the person would be learning disabled.

The common signs of dyslexia change as a person gets older. For infants and children the gift part of dyslexia will or can cause an alteration in the normal course or flow of early child development. The infants usually don't follow the normal time charts for development. They may walk and talk either early or late, seldom is it within the norm. They will either be very active or lethargic. They will often be either the "nightmare kid" that gets into everything, or the "perfect child." They can appear to be extremely bright or bordering on mental deficiency. What I find interesting is that most dyslexics will have a mixture of both good and bad attributes of the early developmental differences. There is no consistency. In fact the only consistency in dyslexia is its inconsistency.

After the child reaches school age things change. The negative side of dyslexia can begin to show, and the child can begin to struggle. Most dyslexic children, by the time they are in third grade don't like school, and don't want to go. Remember any subject that causes them enough confusion will cause them to be learning disabled in that subject. If they are learning disabled in a subject like reading, writing, or spelling, they will be struggling. No matter how much effort or energy they are putting out they just aren't getting it. Because they are making mistakes, they are failing and they are also experiencing the proper emotions and attitudes to go along with it. Probably the best single word to express the first three years of school for a dyslexic is the word frustration.

Usually between the ages of nine and twelve dyslexia goes through another change. In this phase the dyslexic begins to find and/or develop solutions for their problems in school. They wind up with the real disability of the learning disability. These things I call old solutions are compulsive behaviors that replace actual learning. They allow the child to function and appear to have learned something which in reality they didn't.

The most common characteristics of adult dyslexia are problems writing, spelling and reading. In reading the common characteristics are slow reading, the need to reread the same material numerous times and a low reading stamina (cannot read for a long period of time).

Sue:
How does a person with dyslexia perceive their world and why can this be a benefit, not a problem ( which most folks would classify it as)?

Ron:
In my opinion, perception, the physical process of bringing information about the environment into the mental system, has no real standard. It is true that a "standard human being" has all of the sensory equipment, but there are slight structural differences in the sensory organs. Therefore from the very beginning of the perception process there are going to be differences in all people. Then the differences in our mental processing of the information would widen the gap. Just because we can both, see and recognize green grass, blue sky, and red flowers, we should not assume that we are seeing or perceiving the same things. But that assumption is prevalent in our society. It is the reason that a dyslexic person cannot tell you, nor would they think to tell you, about the differences in the way they perceive their world.

That having been said, we can look at what dyslexics can do that will widen the perception gap even further. The dyslexic has the talent which allows them to use disorientation. This is done without effort or conscious control. Disorientation alters or distorts their normal perception. Their perception is being influenced or replaced by their thoughts. Ordinarily people are aware of the difference between what they are thinking and what they are perceiving. During a disorientation they are the same thing. If you consider that what we perceive is what we accept as reality, during a disorientation we are experiencing our thinking as reality. If a person is watching a movie, a non dyslexic would only be entertained by what they are seeing and hearing, while the dyslexic could actually be experiencing the action. It is because disorientation erases the difference between thought and reality that this happens. When you see a person "daydreaming" this is what they are doing., they are not experiencing the reality of the environment, they are experiencing a reality of their own creation. Most people who do not daydream would discount its value, because they are unaware that this is creativity in its most basic form. Albert Einstein said that the answer to his dilemma on general relativity came to him in a day dream that lasted only a few seconds.

Here we are seeing only the tip of an iceberg. Disorientation allows the individual to include all of their sensory or perception systems into their thought process. I call this multi-dimensional thought. Ordinarily human thinking is limited to verbal or pictorial thinking, disorientation throws the door wide open and the thinking process is enhanced at least five fold. If a person is trying to diagnose a situation, define a problem, or come up with a real solution, the ability to do so would be enhanced at least five fold if they were to slip into multi dimensional thought. The learning problems we can experience as a dyslexic are only the price we must pay for this ability.

Sue:
You seem to say that dyslexia as a learning disability, is really an ability for a person to use her/his "disorientation" part of their brain. Can you tell us more about this idea and how it affects the work you do?

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